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There’s a real problem at the New York City Department of Correction — and it goes far beyond a politically wired chaplain’s allowing a convicted felon to throw a lavish family party while locked away.

In a series of articles, The Post exposed rampant favoritism in the city’s jail system — for celebrity inmates and well-connected prisoners, not to mention those who are merely co-religionists of politically powerful officials.

Rapper Foxy Brown did nine months for a parole violation — but Rikers Island was like her personal private penthouse, with chaplains and wardens waiting on her hand and foot, providing special favors and treatment.

At the Tombs, since-resigned chaplain Rabbi Leib Glanz provided Jewish inmates with special favors and privileges — and used his political juice to get any correction officers who crossed him transferred to other facilities.

Amazingly, that account is backed up by former inmates and guards, as well as a retired mid-level supervisor at the Tombs.

Much of the special treatment appears to have been doled out by Glanz and other chaplains of several denominations — as well as the deputy commissioner for ministerial services, the politically cosseted Imam Umar Abdul-Jalil, who has been vigorously defended by no less that Mayor Bloomberg.

But, as The Post’s series documented, the favoritism apparently reached even higher — to wardens and other officials, like Chief of Department Carolyn Thomas, who reportedly provided Brown with a warm, personal send-off when her term ended.

The Department of Investigation is looking into the circumstances surrounding the Tombs party — a lavish bar mitzvah that Glanz arranged for the family of imprisoned fraudster Tuvia Stern.

That probe needs to be expanded to include a top-to-bottom look at the department’s hierarchy.

Yes, prisons traditionally have been riddled with favoritism and payoffs, at just about every level.

But that doesn’t mean such situations, once uncovered, should be tolerated. A thorough housecleaning is needed — now.